Please do not use slang. It’s annoying enough to listen to someone in reality use slang and can’t seem to speak in proper English, but to write your characters using slang makes your writing dated. And it’s a stereotype. It makes poor dialogue. Use slang with caution.
~Kelly J.J.~
A lot, I mean A LOT, of people would disagree with me on this. Which is fine, it’s your story. You do what you want to it. Please, do hear me out. Many people do it, even best selling authors do it. It’s something so common that there is a name for it. It’s called ‘Said Bookisms’. Heard of it before? Maybe you use it. I remember there was a time where I would write ‘He snapped’, ‘She yelled’, ‘She muttered’ as my dialogue tags. I thought it was the best thing for dialogue. Boy how I was so wrong…….
‘Said Bookisms’, is a form of amateurish writing. It’s also another way of talking down to your reader. You do not need to hold someone’s hand while he/she is trying to read your story. With ‘Said’ Bookisms, you basically ‘tell’ the reader how your character just spoke the dialogue. Why not let your readers infer or know how your characters are speaking without you telling them straight out?
There are people that LOVE ‘said’ bookisms. However, readers like me and editors HATE them! With the tone and mood of the scene and the way your characters word their sentences (more like how you word their sentences.), it would not be hard, at all, to figure out how someone is speaking.
I posted something earlier. It talked about ‘showing’ the reader. Not ‘telling’. If you ‘show’ the reader the emotions of the characters, then it would be very very easy to know how the dialogue is being spoken. Dialogue tags are for the reader to know who is speaking. A lot of times, you can substitute dialogue tags with action tags.
Think about it. When you read, you hardly notice the word said. However, loading your story up with synonyms of said, just makes the dialogue heavy and pulls the reader out of your story. It also ruins the rhythm of it. Please stick with ‘said’. If you don’t believe me, just Google ‘Said Bookisms‘. There are a lot of sites that explain why it is bad to use them in your writing.
Please Do Not Write: she shrieked, he snapped, she yelled, she cried, he whispered, he muttered and so on.
Please Do Write!: he said, she said.
~Kelly J.J.~
Novel Writing- Do's and Don'ts! 